and, as usual, it was too good to be true. Tennessee has breastfeeding laws, and I was all excited thinking I could go pump whenever I needed to, and that my employer was required to let me go. Not really. I’m so upset. It says they have to let us have unpaid breaks, but only if it doesn’t disrupt business as usual. So they really don’t have to, because anytime you take a break as an OR nurse, you’re interrupting business as usual because they have to relieve you in a room, or the patient might roll to the room later, etc. Why even make a law if they can’t be more decisive than that? So now, I’m back to square one, trying to finagle time during a busy day without being dependent on my employers to provide it. What happens is I get stuck in a room with no relief, full to bursting, and I just have to suffer because they keep effing firing everybody and they have no help, and the charge nurse won’t come relieve you for a few minutes because they’re too busy “managing”. I need more control than that. I need a job where it’s not imperative that I be stuck and dependent on someone else’s good graces to take care of bodily functions.

I’ve decided to transfer up to the ICU and eventually go to school to become a CRNA. I hate school with a hairy passion, but I hate my job right now worse. I was dreading going back to work, I’m not focused, and I don’t want to be there. I have to force myself to get up and gird my loins for work every morning. You spend waaaaaay too much time at work to be unhappy,in my opinion, so it’s time to do something new.

In other news, Fletcher’s beginning to realize that Sabrina’s not going away. He is not amused. Alas. I have new pictures. My offspring:

and what I actually did were at war with each other, but it worked, for now. Yes, folks, I’ve had another run-in with the crazy neighbor. He tried to call the codes/restriction department for the city and get us fined for working on a car outside the garage (to the side of the house). We got the letter while I was in the hospital, and initially, I wanted to run out of there in my backless gown and whoop his ass. Personally. Yeah, it was the dope talking, I know. However, after I calmed down, I wanted to go to the H.ustler Hollywood store, buy a footlong d.ildo, and wrap it up with a ribbon and a note:

Dear STUPID NEIGHBOR, You are cordially invited to go f.uck yourself. Here’s a little gift to get the party started! Love, Nina and YCU.

So, maybe it wasn’t the dope talking, but I digress. Anyway, the letter stated that we had to work on the car on gravel/pavement that wasn’t a sidewalk (the whole sideyard is gravel), and it had to be enclosed on 3 sides ( let’s see…rock wall, rock wall, house, check!) and the car couldn’t be unregistered (well, I’m pretty sure that stickers on the license plate that say 2011 aren’t out of date yet, buy who am I to make that call?). Does all this sound stupid to anyone else? My husband confronted the guy and was informed that Stupid Neighbor and our other 2 adjoining neighbors had had a meeting about us and that no one wanted to live around us because we were so trashy. WAIT A MINUTE. HOLD THE PHONE. Just who the HELL you callin’ trashy? How dare he? I’m sorry, but he didn’t have any meeting, cause the other two neighbors wave at us when they see us and ask about the kids. Sorry, jackass, you’re nothing but a controlling, bullying, hypocritical person of suspect parentage, and you don’t get to threaten us. If I want to paint my house orange with purple polka dots, it’s MINE, motherfu.cker!! Anyway, so Monday, when he was mowing our grass (at 8am, no less), I marched out there in my bathrobe and bare feet and ordered him off our property. I also threatened to have him arrested for trespassing if he ever showed up over here again. He started spouting codes and policies, to which I responded: “We’re not in violation yet, so you can leave. NOW!” He then started spouting how Jesus loves me and God will take care of my family…whatever. I informed him he was a hypocritical bastard and gave him the “You’re #1” sign, then walked back in the house. Haven’t laid eyes on him since, but…you know we will again. He apparently has Alzheimer’s where we’re concerned. My next move is to call the police and tell them he’s been peeping in my windows. Which he technically has, since he takes it on himself to push our trashcans up from the road each week and he has to look right in the windows behind the cans…But that’s only if he shows up again.

That heartburn thing I thought we had licked? Yeah, he’s back, and this time he brought all his cousins. I can’t lay in bed without propping myself up anymore. Everyone at work has decided that I’ve “popped out” this week. I hope that means she’s moved and is head down, planning to stay that way. I’m so tired, I’ve not folded clothes or run the dishwasher yet. And I don’t plan to. Fletcher’s growing like a weed, he’s learning to climb on everything, so now we’re teaching him that the furniture is not a jungle gym, and balls are outside toys. *sigh* It’s been rather slow going. He still loves to read, but he’s been picky about his food this week. This is a kid who’s favorite food was food. I hope this is temporary, as he can’t help us out by telling us what he likes yet. The Speech Evaluator is coming out tomorrow. I’ll let you know what we find out!

ostensibly to attend some car show, but now he’s mad because all his friends that were gonna go with him “flaked out” to have babies, or take care of babies, or worry over their crazy wives having contractions. Bless his heart. So now, since he can’t do what he wanted, he’s just not gonna do anything. There’s a hundred things I would loooooooooove to get out of the house and do with him, and I can’t get him off the couch! I’m soooooo frustrated. And bored! I’m tired of sitting around this house waiting for him to decide to do something.

That sniff if two-fold. I’ve been dealing with a sinus infection/ebola virus (yes, again) and do you know my ENT tried to give me amoxicillin? I told them “They give my 16 month old amoxicillin. This isn’t going to touch what I’ve got going on in there.” Because I was pregnant, they were afraid to give me anything stronger. Seriously? I called my OB, and begged for Levaquin. Miracle drug, that one. Anyway, she didn’t want to give me that cause she said it was a category C drug and didn’t like to use it for pregnant girls. It was all I could do not ask “It’s not a category X, is it?” She called me in some clarithromycin. We’ll see. The other part of my *double sniff* is my child took off his own dipey today and threw it over the side of his baby jail. It was wet. (What’s funny about this is I didn’t notice till I saw him sitting on my kitchen floor and thought to myself: Hmmm. That doesn’t look like the Mickey/Minnie Huggies he had on earlier…Oh God, it’s his pee-pee!) He’s 16 months old. Dare we start looking at potties? I haven’t noticed him hiding behind the furniture…wait a minute. Maybe I have. But isn’t this awfully early for potty-training a boy? Aren’t they supposed to take off their dipeys and put the ‘big boys’ on the week before kindergarten or something? Maybe we’ll get one and let him get used to it being around. Ideas?

And…the neighbor. *sigh* He’s at it again. Last week while my brother and SIL were here, he came over and was mowing our front yard, presumably because he thought it was too high. No, he wasn’t doing us a favor, because if he was, he’d have mowed the backyard too, but he didn’t. My SIL told me she had thought I was kidding before when I was complaining about it. Nope. Dead serious. Then, the next day, my husband and his friend were working on his car outside and the neighbor came over and offered them $50 apiece if they would move the car inside the garage so he didn’t have to look at it every time he walked out of the house. Not kidding. It’s amazing, I know. He doesn’t seem to get it. We own this house. We pay the mortgage. Therefore, we can do pretty much whatever we want to with it, as long as it’s not an eyesore. (Which it wasn’t, they move it inside every night when they’re done. They like to work in the light and breeze. Reasonable, no? The next time I see him, I’m gonna have to lay down the law and tell him not to set foot on our property, I don’t care if the house is on fire, he better not even unzip his britches to piss on it. Trespassers will be shot, and survivors shot again, etc. I don’t like to be that way, but apparently, he’s just dumb enough that I have to be. I’ll put up a sign, or something. Have him arrested for it, which is totally asinine, but what else do you do?

UPDATE: He was cutting our grass again this am. YCU is convinced that if we piss him off, he’ll call the police/city code people every time we want to do anything, and even if we’re not doing anything wrong, he doesn’t want to deal with them. He also said that if I say anything and he smarts off to me, he (my husband) will end up in jail for punching him in the nose. Seriously? Like I’m not perfectly capable of taking care of myself. *ARRRRRRRGH!* He promises to put up a sign. We all know it won’t work, and we’ll have to do things my way anyway, but I’d rather just save a lot of time and holler at him now rather than later.

We used our good boy name. But. I think I’ve found another one. At the risk of being totally cliche and hokey, I like the name Embry Holden. (Yes, like Embry from the Twilight series. Like I said. Cliche.) I also like Emilie Genevieve (pronounced in French jon-vee-ev) but can you imagine the misspellings and butcherings? Quelle horreur! (It’s been a loooooooong time since French class, please forgive me if that’s not the right spelling. I’m sure you get the gist.) And another thing. If all this pukiness denotes girly parts, she better show up with sparkles and ribbons, is all I’m saying. I feel like pooooooo. Big, stinky trashcans full of poooooooo. Just thought you’d like to know. I live on crackers at work, and praying my energy level comes back soon.

Well, last night, a tornado apparently jumped the house. *sigh* We’re all ok, (It’s official, Fletcher can sleep through a tornado) just a few trees knocked down. The neighbor lost a bunch of shingles, and there were trees down over the road going both directions out of the driveway, so we were stuck all day. We’ve had people slowing down as they went past the house all day, gawking at the trees. I’m trying to get to my pics, but my husband bought me a new laptop! (I must have been a really good girl lately! 😉 ) As you all know, I’m highly technologically challenged, so I might not be able to post them for a few days, till YCU has time to fix it. Anyways, he also bought me a new watch, so I won’t be late coming back from lunch anymore at work. Fletcher still has the sniffles, but seems to be doing better. Me, I feel fine, as long as I eat. I get nauseous when I wait too long. I’ll try to get the pics tomorrow. Toodles.

There’s been some nothing happening here. And some nothing, and a little more nothing. *beleaguered sigh* Still in limbo. No positive pee-sticks. No sore boobs. And no period. *more frustrated sighs* I actually went to the doc’s office yesterday, but it was just to pick up samples of my pre-natals, and coupons for them. I don’t know if you can really call them coupons, but they take care of my co-pay for them, rendering them free, so I won’t be getting my equine dentistry license anytime soon. Anyway.

Remember the surgeon that wouldn’t want to dilute his gene pool with me because I wasn’t an athlete? Well, he is really a silver-tongued devil. In his mind, at least. He was discussing how he likes figures that are long and lean, and that if you have overly large a-hems, that you look chunkier than you really are. It was all I could do not to look at him with a mischievous expression and ask “Are you calling me fat?” Instead, I just chuckled and told him that based on several statements made in my presence, he had a specific type of woman that he liked, and that very few of us actually fit that mold. Then he starts back-pedaling and says “Oh, no, Nina, I think you have a very nice figure.” Really? Again, as if I was fishing, but really? That’s the best he could do? An afterthought? Um, yeah. If you’re going to give me a compliment, could you at least make a vague attempt to act like you mean it and aren’t just saying it just to be nice? When I called him on it, he even said that he just didn’t want me to be left out. Wow. What a total douchebag. *massive eye roll* That was as funny as the gene-pool dilution story! I have absolutely no aspirations to be attractive like that at work, I’m just pointing out the total lack of social skills and manners of this moron. Trust me, this does nothing to my over-developed self esteem. I know I’m hot. 😉 Sticks and stones will break my bones, but backward non-compliments by total losers that think a medical degree is the end-all, be-all for the opposite sex will never hurt me!

This is precisely what I need. Badly. I have no idea how to accessorize. I have no sense of style whatsoever. My clothes are either boring or look like I belong in the Teenage Mother’s Playgroup. AND DO YOU KNOW THAT STACY AND CLINTON WERE IN NASHVILLE??!@!!!!!!#$% I mean, really? Really. Why couldn’t that be me? Do you know what I could do with $5000? I could buy enough clothes to fill this whole house! Although, I’m wondering just how expensive things really are in New York, cause it always looks like the makeoverees don’t get much for their money. What that tells me is I’ve never bought anything but cheap stuff or New York clothes are waaaaaaaay expensive, cause I think I could get a lot of stuff for that kind of money. Although, I’d never get any shopping done, cause I’d be too busy looking at all the places and things I’ve read about. I live vicariously through books. I’ve never been anywhere! Well, I’ve done the Redneck Riviera, and I’ve done various amusement parks, but I’d love to see San Francisco, or New York, or Boston. But I need Clinton and Stacy to dress me first.

Just sat and thought about how your life would have been different if…? Yeah. I do that a lot. It’s not that I’m unhappy, exactly, but more that I’ve got so much more potential. I feel like I get disrespected at work, which bleeds over into my home life. I get irritated by the minutiae of the day and the fact that I work around a bunch of rude-ass people who can’t even answer you when you ask a question, or act like they just didn’t hear you and either talk over you, or do precisely what you asked them not to. I realize I have control issues, but I’m really tired of fighting for it. Here and at work. I feel like no one gives a shit what I think should be done, but then when I just take care of things myself(doing my best not to inconvenience everyone else), I’m called pushy, overbearing, bitchy, inappropriate, etc. Then, when I explain why I do what I do, (which I’ve spent my whole life coming up with justifications for everything I do and everything I want mostly because I despise people bitching at me and I always felt like if my parents had explained why more often, I wouldn’t have been nearly as sneaky, conniving, bitter, put upon, etc.), either they don’t want to hear it, or it’s ignored and they just keep right on bitching. Hmmm….most of this is reminiscent of home. I’m sorry, one of my pet peeves is people who act like you never even spoke when you ask a question. Dammit, I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t need the answer! If it’s not a good time, say that. Politely. Then get back to me. (‘Hang on’, ‘just a minute’, etc are all perfectly appropriate.) I’m sorry that ‘men use up their quota of words during the day’ or whatever crap that is. I don’t have time for that. I’m not just talking for my health. I’m not asking questions I already know the answers to, or I wouldn’t have asked, jackass. Answer me, or tell me where the information is, and I don’t need you telling me how much better someone else is at [fill in the blank] whatever I’m asking about, or how I can just look and know, or how it’s common sense. It’s not, or I wouldn’t be asking, fucker! Suffice it to say, I’m feeling a bit put upon, today. I’m tired of justifying myself. Time for the world to justify to me, a bit.

I read this book a long time ago, called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the big topics in it was how to “Seek first to understand, then be understood.” I want to do this, but I feel like I’m being roadblocked everywhere. Maybe I should have read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” instead.